Corporate Blogging – How Can It Be Controlled?

I’ve written in this space a number of times about the benefits of businesses starting their own blogs. Those benefits are almost innumerable. An interesting question about institutional blogging came up at the recent conference for Virginia’s Community Colleges, where I participated in a roundtable discussion. A marketing and PR professional at one of the schools asked how to handle a situation. The school was contemplating starting a blog, and was thinking about opening it up to allow students to start their own blogs as well.

At first glance I can see the reason that this would be considered. Positive experiences from current students would surely encourage site visitors to attend the school themselves. The problem with this plan, however, is lack of control over one’s web domain. I recommended against the plan because the school couldn’t guarantee the students would write about positive experiences. At the point when it’s visible, it’s too late to control it. The school couldn’t edit the post or delete it, because that would bring potentially damaging cries of censorship. So, it would just have to live with the situation.

I recommended launching the school’s blog and employing students to populate it through something akin to a newspaper system. The students would write about events or experiences and submit their information to a person in charge of the blog, who would edit it before posting it on the website. Someone else in the room even suggested that credits could be given to the “reporters”.

While this particular question was about an educational institution, it comes down to control of a brand. Like it or not, a website is a gigantic part of any company’s brand these days. It may be the only “print” many people see about you.   Because of that, corporate blogs need to be tightly controlled. Here are some suggestions for anyone considering launching their own:

• Don’t expect your blog to run on its own. Someone who knows the ins and outs of the blogging software needs to be control of moderating everything, particularly comments. Spam comments will definitely come your way and negative comments might. Remember, just because someone submits a comment doesn’t mean you need to post it.
• People who write on your blog for the company should be compensated specifically for that job. This seems like a strange suggestion, but … see the example I gave and you’ll see why I included it.
• With larger companies, every post that goes live on the blog should be reviewed by at least two other people in the firm. This will reduce not only factual and grammatical errors (both just look bad) but also guard against renegade employees who have their own agenda.
• The manager or owner of the company needs to know what’s going on. They should know how the blog software works, so they can jump in and take control if things go awry with the aforementioned renegade employee.

By taking these steps, hopefully your corporate blogging experience will be a positive one!

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